I imagine it's a little difficult to compare the two because there is a difference in bargaining power between a regular employee (who is closer to a commodity) and a CEO candidate (for which the applicant pool is much smaller, and company fit very important).

Secondly, a CEO, being the head of the company, could technically be held 'accountable' for hundreds of millions of dollars, and it'd be reasonable for someone to want to shield themselves from such a liability, which might not necessarily arise out of a violation of their own, but rather of the company.

In government, C-level people make less than $200k, usually a lot less, yet seem to be able to competently lead organizations consisting of tens of thousands of people. One commissioner of a multi-billion dollar agency that I knew drove a late 90s Accord a few years ago.

They are also subject to invasive and strict ethics and disclosure rules revolving door policies.

CEOs mint money because of social connections, not value to the business. The board members who implicitly endorse graft should themselves be subject to criminal sanction.

> CEOs mint money because of social connections, not value to the business.

Sure, the CEOs are themselves often on the boards of other corporations. The incestuous nature of this top level is bordering on the absurd.

"competently"

Maybe if we started hiring "regular" people for CEO, companies could spend the excess compensation on other employees so we can keep the good ones around and stop the nickel & diming that leads to a man getting beaten for riding is his paid-for airplane seat.

United's CEO was paid $19m last year (per Morningstar). United has 86000 employees. That works out to $220 per employee over the course of the year, or about $10 per paycheck (gross).

If you dumped all the executives, the raise amounts to $30/paycheck. Do you think $600/year is the difference between good employees and those that let men get beaten?

Morningstar's free summary doesn't break down cash vs. equity. The latter is mainly being paid by shareholders and wouldn't represent cash that was available to distribute to employees. Therefore it is highly likely that the "windfall" of a regular Joe CEO would be much less than I have noted here.

Isn't there a large org chart of not-quite $19MM earners to account for, too? It's not like everybody makes $200K until being made CEO.

At the low end of wages I think 600 a year would alleviate enough stress to show an improvement in employee behavior. People don't usually wake up thinking they'll half ass their job or make a poor decision that day, but when you are dealing with the stress of paying rent or putting food on the table it just pushes you that much closer to cracking

You could hire a few teams of incredibly skilled people for that though.

At that point normal teams will balance out the results of incredibly skilled teams.

But won't balance out the CEO?

It's not about bargaining power, it's about even considering them for the job. Wouldn't you think they were telling you they're probably going to turn out to be more trouble than they're worth? I'm pretty sure that's what conventional wisdom says is the correct response.

...but I'd be 20x more keen to take a job at a company who doesn't fire on suspicion. E.g. a company who stands their ground and says: "We know we're subject of a PR campaign against us, but we respect the presumption of innocence: We won't fire X because he hasn't yet been proven guilty in court, and we will fire any that is proven guilty." i.e. GitHub, Mozilla both have fired CEOs on unproven claims.

A CEO's job is to champion the interests of their company. If they're mired in controversy, legitimate or otherwise, their ability to do that job is compromised. Sometimes, it's the right move for the company to stand by an unpopular CEO. Other times, it's better to walk away.

Customers and investors are fickle, and often irrational. Supporting a CEO that is driving both away because "presumption of innocence" might be the worst possible move you could make, depending on the situation. In fact, I'd argue that a hallmark characteristic of a good CEO is someone who can say, "My continued presence is hurting the company. I need to step down, so everyone else can succeed" if that's what's needed.

Yes, even if the controversy is completely made-up bullshit.

In the long run, the company and the (former) CEO will both be better off if they can look back at a gracefully handled departure, where everything turned out to be so much noise, than some Pyrrhic victory, where you've alienated customers, investors have walked, but, by god! you stood by your CEO!

In this case, the guy was party to a felony and was paid nearly $30M to go away.

What about proving the felony in court and make him pay for hurting shareholder value?

The upside of following courts and presumption of innocence is, you can tell your next CEO, "This won't happen to you because you'll respect the law, and what's more, if you respect the law we'll even respect the presumption of innocence and keep you in your job much longer than at Mozilla's and GitHub's. And you'll be clean of controversy when you leave, so it will be much easier for you to jump on an even bigger CEO position."